


le coup de foudre

by firstaudrina



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>three vignettes about desire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	le coup de foudre

_I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair._  
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.  
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me,  
all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. 

_I hunger for your sleek laugh,  
your hands the color of a savage harvest,  
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,  
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond._  
Pablo Neruda

 

Lestat is in a tavern in New Orleans, the especially rough kind that he enjoys on nights like this, when the wind is rough and his father's pleas grate especially. He has been in the New World for two weeks. Everything in him thirsts for the old one.

He spends the best part of the evening flirting with a beautiful girl with warm brown skin – until the crowd parts and he sees, well. He sees Nicolas. 

Only not Nicolas, because Nicki has gone into the fire and this man is plainly human. His skin is flushed with warmth and drink, his dark hair falling messily out of its tie. He grins once, quick, but it seems to pain him and he falls afterwards into despondency, to the coddling attention of the women at his side. He wears homespun fabrics, well loved and often mended. Nicolas wore gold brocade and Italian lace, tied his hair with silk ribbons. 

"But it's impossible, you see, I'm impossible," the man is saying. His voice is deeper than Nicki's and his accent is different. "And it is all my fault, what they say – have you heard what they say? It's all the truth and I'm to blame –"

Again his companions seek to comfort him, seek his money and attention. 

_I too am impossible_ , Nicolas said, that very first day.

Lestat forgets all about his girl and instead follows the young man out into the night. 

 

 

At their little mock dinner, Lestat amuses himself by throwing grapes one by one across the table at Louis. Louis can never tell if Lestat is bored by him or only pretends to be bored; if the latter, then he does not know what could possibly be of interest to Lestat about him. 

Finally Louis snaps and grabs up a handful of the fallen grapes, throwing them forcefully back at Lestat. Most of them bounce harmlessly off the table, or pop against the walls. Lestat starts laughing, his big wide laugh with teeth showing, head tipping back and hair golden in the light.

Louis lives every day feeling mocked and he cannot bear it anymore. "Is this what I am to you? An amusement? A creature to taunt until it reacts?"

Lestat stops laughing and his lip curls a little. "Sometimes."

Louis frowns, nearly pouts, anger making him still. Lestat looks at him with restrained fury in his own expression, but slowly the furrow in his brow seems to be confusion and then it shifts to pity. He moves closer, chair dragged heavily across the floor to bridge the gap between them. He brings his hand up to Louis' mouth, to touch very gently the full shape of it with his fingertips. Briefly, his touch even invades the open mouth to find the needle-sharp fangs.

"Once," Lestat begins, like the telling of a tale, only he falls silent. The silence stretches and his hand falls away; the tease of knowledge hangs heavily between them, exacerbating Louis' unhappiness. "Let's go out, hm?"

"Why will you never tell me anything?" Louis implores, wretched, desperate. 

Lestat, as ever, does not answer. 

 

 

Claudia is a miniature study in perfection; when very still she might appear inanimate. Perfectly delicate little fingers on little hands, a small face shaped like a heart with full childish cheeks, a mouth like a closed bud, long dark eyelashes. She looks at herself in the mirror often. She can imagine the kind of woman she might have been, had she been given the chance. She thinks she would have been very fine indeed. 

She takes cosmetics from the home of an actress she kills. Respectable women don't wear much in the way of cosmetics but Claudia has studied what it can do to the faces of actors and so she paints her own face very, very carefully: carves out the plum cheeks until they appear to come to high points like Louis', makes the round eyes long and feline, brings the mouth to blossom. 

Lestat finds her at it and she feels incredible embarrassment. "Ma petite, you look as though you fell face first into your paints," he says, lips showing his amusement. 

Louis is at his side, much more forgiving. "Oh, but darling Claudia, you're most beautiful as yourself."

She lets him wipe her face clean and does not bother to explain that it is not a matter of beauty, not at all.


End file.
